Saturday 28 May 2011

His passing WILL be televised

Gil Scott-Heron died today: the man who invented rap by merging jazz, poetry, socialism and civil rights. I could post some obscure tracks by him or his first outfit, The Last Poets, to show how cool I am, but nothing's cooler, more searching, more angry and more politically spot on than his most famous track.

Unfortunately, nothing could be more wrong either: capitalism has appropriated every subversive impulse in popular culture, most glaringly in the African-American genres which inherited Scott-Heron's music.

1 comment:

Zoot Horn said...

R.I.P eh? One of my favourite surrealist painters/writers died this week too - Leonora Carrington.